prairie point

hedge parsley and other weeds

One of my native plant enthusiast friends likes to say that "a weed is anything that you don't want in your garden." The point being that if you like a plant it is not a weed, no matter what category someone else might put it in. I had a relative who thought dandelions were pretty and let them grow in her flowerbeds. Of course dandelions were originally brought to this country as an edible crop, anyway.

One plant that I consider a weed is hedge parsley or Torilis arvensis. We've got a corner where it has become quite a pest. A few years ago I sowed a wildflower seed mixture there. I sometimes suspect there was hedge parsley in the mixture. That may not be true. It may have spread there some other way. At any rate when it first came up I assumed it was part of the mixture because it has a fairly attractive flower, like Queen Anne's Lace. The obnoxious part is the seeds which appear right about now. They are like velcro and stick to your pants leg and shoe laces. They make a tangled mess in the cat's fur and sometimes have to be cut out.

I was surprised to see a site on the Internet with an action plan to deal with the decline of hedge parsley in England and western Europe. Every plant of course serves some useful purpose. All I can say is that I wish this one were declining in my yard instead of over there.